With over 1,300,000 caches around the world, there are many places for a caching family to get out and enjoy the outdoors. Many of the caches are located along trails, in parks and conservation areas that you may not even know about in your area. We have lived in our area for 38 years and have found many new places and trails to take our kids. Places we did not even know about until we were geocaching.

When we started caching, the kids where excited to get out and find “treasure” but as time goes on (as with most kids) they started to lose interest. A few small things can help keep it fun and interesting for the kids. It’s important to get the kids involved, not just following along until you get near the cache. By letting them use the GPSr they will have more fun knowing they lead the way to ground zero.

With the abundance of rail trails being turned into hot geocaching spots, packing up the bikes and heading to one of these trails adds a new dynamic to family caching adventures.

When at the cache area, have everyone find the cache. Our family uses the “click” system. After each person finds the cache they quietly move away and say “click”. This allows everyone to have a chance at finding the cache.

Have the kids put together a swag bag full of things they would like to trade. And remind them to trade up or trade even, this will keep the cache fun for the next finders.

Plan out you’re caching day. Try to find some fun and interesting caches by reading the cache description, logs and looking at the terrain and difficulty. A kid-friendly attribute is an option for cache descriptions. Though we find this attribute isn’t used commonly, it can be helpful while planning out your day.

If you are caching at night, it’s a good idea to have a Clip-On Marker or ZipLit that you can attached to the kids for safety. Everyone having their own flashlight helps each person walk safely along the path.

If you find a cache that you know the kids will love save it for near the end, this will top off their day and they will talk about it all the way home. Our kids have their own mini backpacks for caching. Inside is swag for trading, insect repellent, bandages, flashlights for night caching and pens. Before heading out everyone adds a few snacks to their bag and plenty of water.

Geocaching is an activity for the whole family so get out, have fun and be
safe.

What do you really need for a successful night of caching? There are five things that you must have:

Permission to be in the area

Headlamp

Flashlight

Batteries

A Buddy

Not all areas are open after dusk. Look for attribute icons when you aresearching for night caches. Not everyone uses their allotment of 10 attributesso be sure and look for signs when you enter the area.

I think that a headlamp is required when you are walking around rural areasat night. Headlamps aren’t as important in urban areas. That being said you might not want to cache is some urban areas at night. My headlamp of choice, the Irix, has variable output. I find I don’t need full power when I’m walking on open flat trails which provides the best battery life.

In addition to my headlamp I bring along a bright flashlight. I switched to LED flashlights a few years ago and haven’t looked back. My 100 lumen Rogue2 provides an excellent, clear, beam when searching for those hard to findgeocaches. Again, it’s good to have a flashlight that has a low power settingin order to conserve battery power. When caching in the dark months it’s not uncommon for us to have our flashlights on for 4-6 hours straight. Battery management is key. (If it’s cold keep your batteries inside your coat)

Speaking of batteries you can’t have too many. Even though I use rechargeables I like to keep a couple of alkaline batteries around just in caseI forget to charge up before going on an outing. Just about any device you use at night will need batteries. I keep a wind-up flashlight in the car but that’s for emergencies, including getting that caching fix!

I very rarely geocaching alone at night. I might do it if it’s a quick drive-by but I don’t go out on trails at night by myself and it’s not becauseI’m afraid of the dark. It is a matter of safety. Hurting yourself at night gets complicated if you don’t have someone there to help you.

Why are FireTacks so bright? The short answer is that they are retroreflective. Retroreflective means that much of the light shown at an object will be reflected back to the source. You most frequently see this effect on road signs. These signs are designed to be visible from distances sufficient for the sign to be helpful. Stops signs you can’t see until it’s too late are not helpful.

In every day circumstances most objects we see are either diffuse reflective of mirror reflective.

In mirror reflective materials the light is often directed away from the viewer. In this way these materials do not always appear bright to person holding the light source. The same cannot be said for the person viewing the reflection! Shiny or mirror like objects may seem like a good choice for building a night cache but generally they are not. There are more useful for creating effects that would make an night cache interesting but they do not work well as trail markers.

Diffuse reflection is what you get from something like snow or a white sheet of paper. The return path of the light source is spread out in many directions. In this situations the object will appear bright from a variety of angles but not much light is sent back to the viewer. We percieve these objects as being brighter than their surroundings but they aren’t necessarily very bright at all. These kinds of materials are best suited for increasing contrast between objects during the day. Increased contrast is helpful at night if you are trying to make it easier for the cacher to distinguish writing or shapes that make up part of your night cache.

Retroreflective materials in contrast can return as much as 58% of the light to the original source.This is why retroreflective materials are visible from great distances. There is one draw back to retroreflective materials and that is that they have a very small effective observation angle. This is the angle between the light source and your eyes. Typically for the observer to notice the retroreflected light their observation angle must be less than 1°. In most cases an observation angle over 2° renders the FireTack ineffective. FireTacks are effective when holding your flashlight slightly above your your head or no more than six inches below your eys. Make it easier on yourself and use a headlamps when following FireTacks. The retroreflective nature of FireTacks make them the best choice for trail markers. (Remember to use them for the trail out as well as the trail in, use different colors to distinguish the inbound and outbound trails.)

Flat trail markers are visible to the observer from head on or slightly to the side, around 60° either side of head on. By making FireTacks three dimensional there are more surfaces thus increasing the available viewing angles. As a result the observer has a better chance of seeing the trail.

The type of material used in the reflective trail marker also influences its brightness. FireTack brand trail markers use ASTM type VI and above materials while other brands use ASTM type II materials. The material used in FireTacks has 1000 prisms or glass beads impregnated in the material per sq. inch. The material material used in FireTacks is highly flexible, withstands impact, severe hot and cold, is guaranteed to maintain up to 75% reflectivity for ten years or more, even when left outside for the whole ten years.

We were recently asked about our UV Pens; what they can write on and if you can use the ink outdoors. Have you ever been to a club that stamps your hand with a UV stamp? It can take a little effort to wash off the ink. The UV ink in the pen is about as waterproof as that. It will endure a bit of rain but it won’t last for long. We don’t recommend leaving your UV writing exposed to the elements. Putting it inside a container is good. You can write on plastic, wood or metal. Remember though that even the inside of containers get get wet. For best results we recommend non-UV reactive, cold pressed, acid free paper with self sealing pouch.

You can see from the image above that this type of paper produces a much clearer result. White LED lights are not sufficient to get the ink to react. You will need a UV light source in order to see the ink.

When using our special UV paper and pouch we recommend that you write decoy text in regular ink first and then write in UV. In this way the finder will not immediately realize what they need to do.

The Image above was taken by Gregory Pleau (used with permission) on one of his evening excursions. This picture is an example of what is called “light painting”. In this case the foreground trees were illuminated with his LED flashlight. By brushing the flashlight back and forth on the foreground object he was able to bring life to a dark image. You can see a version without the light painting to the right. This is a great nightscape picture. He did have the advantage of a tripod. Any kind of a long exposure will require a tripod and some kind of shutter release mechanism. I use the IR remote control on my Nikon.

Light Painting at Waterloo Drinks

No tripod? No Camera? No problem! The image to the right was taken using my blackberry. I was out night caching with some friends. We wanted a picture of the well so we used a few headlamps on the foreground and a flashlight on the background. You can’t “paint” as much when you have relatively short exposures. You need long exposures for the best effect. It helps if you steady your camera against a tree, building or other suitably stable object.

High intensity LED flashlights are the key. I find that the combination of my 100 Lumen Rogue 2 and 50 Lumen Link allow me to capture some good pictures on location at night with my Blackberry. Longer exposures and larger lights, like those used by Gregory above, allow for even more creativity.